The Town by Bentley Little Read Free Book Online Page B

first time he saw it. It looked just like a femur bone, a small femur, and whenever he came into the bathhouse he always stopped to look at it.
    He did the same thing this time, crouching down before it, once again trying to imagine where it had come from, how it had gotten here, feeling a delicious tingle of fear pass through him as he examined the yellowing object.
    But the bone was only an appetizer.
    He stood, turned.
    At the back of the structure was the thing that really scared him, the thing that had sent him running back out into Babunya’s arms that first day and had haunted his nightmares ever since. The thing that had made him break his promise to his grandmother never to go into the banya alone.
    The shadow.
    It hovered on the adobe wall above the broken benches, bigger than life. The profile of a man. A Russian man with a fat stomach and a full, chest-length beard.
    It was not a stain or discoloration, was not imprinted onto the wall, but was an honest-to-God shadow, and there was about it the insubstantiality of something that was only a shaded copy of an actual object.
    Only there was no object. There was no source within the banya or within the sight line out the doorway, no comparable shape that it was thrown by. The shadow existed in seeming defiance of the laws of science, and he’d thought about it and thought about it, tried to attribute its form to everything from the weeds outside to the wooden beams of the ceiling inside, but nothing worked. For one thing, the shadow was always there, clear sky or cloudy, its contours immutable and unchanging. For another, it was not an accidental resemblance. It was not a coincidental configuration of images that happened to form the semblance of a man but was a specific, definite figure that could not under any circumstances be interpreted as anything else.
    There was something foreboding about the shape itself, about the man being portrayed, something stern and commanding about his thick body and the way his head was held so unnaturally straight, something intimidating about the figure that, combined with the shadow’s unknown origin, lent to the entire banya an aura of dread.
    Adam gathered his strength, looked up. He saw the silhouetted profile, the strong brow and thick beard, and he had to force himself not to turn away. His heart was pounding, and the air inside the bathhouse suddenly felt cold. The shadow seemed to deepen as he stared at it, the entire interior of the banya growing darker around it, and for a fraction of a second it appeared to have three-dimensional depth.
    He thought he heard a sigh, a whisper, and, his pulse rate shifting into high gear, he bolted out of the banya and back into the sunlight, running as fast as he could, not stopping until he had reached the line of paloverdes.
    It was the longest he had ever stayed in the banya, and he was proud of himself for that. He was getting braver. Always before, he had been out the door immediately after setting eyes on the shadow, but this time he’d been able to look at it for a moment before having to run.
    He shivered, thinking of that sigh, that whisper, and quickly started back down the path toward the house.
    Next time, he would borrow Sasha’s watch and time himself, see if he couldn’t stay in there a little longer each visit.
    He slowed down and turned to look behind him, but the banya was already hidden behind boulders and trees. He stood there for a moment, catching his breath, then continued on.
    It was hard for him to believe that the bathhouse had ever really been used. Even if it hadn’t been scary, he couldn’t imagine himself going in there, getting naked, and sitting around with other guys while they whipped themselves with tree branches. Part of him felt embarrassed even to be related to people who did that.
    But of course, that was not really anything new.
    He’d often been embarrassed about his background.
    Last year, they’d had an “ethnic pride” day at school,